Broad present

"...the imperceptibly short present [that emerged in the the 19th C] has now been replaced by an ever broadening present of simultaneities. In today's electronic present, there is neither anything 'from the past' that we need leave behind nor anything 'from the future' that couldn't be made present by simulated anticipation." Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Our Broad Present

According to Gumbrecht, the old no longer/not yet view of flowing time, sliced by the fleeting, fugitive present, a view appropriate to an vision of progress, has lost its forward momentum. Now we live in an estuary kind of time, 'in which 'everything melts together, everything is 'fusion.'" It's a time of oscillation, of omni-availability, of global presence and physical absence. There's more he says that's interesting.

The theme of presence caught my attention. The heart of the concept of 2nd person encounter is the mutual presence of Each to an Other. In a world where distance is less and less a barrier, how can contact be authentically 2nd person, and the encounter rich?  And in the electronic realm where myriad opportunities await and switching between contacts is quick, easy and ever inviting, how can we sustain encounters worth reflecting on? And how can I or an Other hold still enough, have clear enough contours in the midst of this press of ever morphing and multiplying differences to have encounters at all?

I've been struck, as the author has, by how our visions of the future have changed. Once the talk was of the glories of the world our grandchildren or great grandchildren would inhabit. Now we talk more of the challenge of saving the world, period, and don't, I think, conceive of the future in terms of descendants. The projects of the present are ones of amelioration and enrichment, and less transcendence. There's just so much to think about and do in the evolving here and now.

But I'm no scientist or scholar. What I want to know is whether I can meaningfully address someone or something as You; that's the heart of what presence means. "By calling them present, then, in the very original sense of Latin prae esse, we are saying things are in front of us and thereby tangible," G. says. Tangible?

God-in-love, I affirm in prayer that you are "present wherever I or any open (or are open) to your energy, power and potentiality." I don't know how these can be normally known except through proxy presence. Does this suggest you have the same issues with presence as we have? That commonality would certainly be enough to warrant us called each other 'You.'